abyssus abyssum invocat
by lokogato-sama
Summary: His mother says, you could not protect us, either, but you may avenge us. Avenge us, Bakura. The Thief King in ten divisions, and one host for the legacy. [ThiefKing!Bakura, pseudoAEAU] [slight gore] [1491 words]


Loko: This was a gift-fic for a dear friend's birthday over at LJ; she wanted ThiefKing!Bakura, and I tried to deliver. D

Summary: His mother says, you could not protect us, either, but you may avenge us. Avenge us, Bakura. The Thief King in ten divisions, and one host for the legacy.

Disclaimer: Prompt was from NIN: _God is dead/And no one cares/If there's a hell/I'll see you there._ Takahashi-san owns the characters, plot, and existence of Kul Elna, along with various historical inconsistencies I've tried my best to correct but may still linger throughout. Opening quote courtesy of Sam Johnson. (The title is Latin: 'The abyss calls to the abyss.')

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**abyssus abyssum invocat**

_Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged._

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**I. **

On the day Pharaoh's troops murder everyone in Kul Elna, Bakura isn't home.

He is sulking in the sandy hills around the town, having unsuccessfully complained to his mother about having a favourite toy stolen from him – she'd said that if he couldn't protect it, he didn't deserve it, anyway.

So it is that there are two thieves who are not killed at Kul Elna.

Bakura, and the informant who'd told Pharaoh's troops that they would all be home for the one festival they permitted themselves.

**II.**

The stench is overwhelming and Bakura throws up at his own doorstep.

He rolls his mother onto her back and pats down her pockets, retrieving a few valuable trinkets and her dagger, and crosses her arms. He's not sure if he's strong enough to actually bury her, and he's afraid that if he tries to drag her she'd come apart. It's been a week.

He does the same to the family of the boy who stole from him, although he leaves the small carved jackal on the boy's body out of respect. It is from the tomb of a favourite mistress of an ancient Pharaoh and thus well-made, if not sumptuous.

With any luck they will all be eaten by jackals and the miscellaneous animals which come crawling at the scent of death. They are thieves of the worst sort and do not deserve a whole burial, but they will be carried to all ends of the earth like Osiris, but in the bellies of gods, and eventually they will _become gods_, absorbed into the god of death and his material incarnations.

He's about to leave the house when the sound of hooves thundering roughly through the sand slides sibilantly to his ears. With a curse he jingles his way down the stairs to the cellar – the boy's family had proved a better haul, possibly because he had a father and three brothers – and squeezes himself into a large fault in the wall, hidden behind a sack of grain.

Footsteps echo above and distinct sounds of dragging hiss above him, and the sickening sound of something not entirely solid _thwacking_ to the ground.

Someone comes down the cellar and Bakura fumbles out the dagger, grateful for the clumsiness of soldiers' movements, holding it ready but out of the light to avoid telltale glinting.

The soldier paces closer, closer, closer, Bakura can't _hear for his heartbeats_, and then grabs the bag of grain and leaves.

Bakura is grateful for his clothes, so filthy that he blends into the wall, and his hair, so dark he blends into the shadows.

**III.**

There is nothing but the small carved jackal and a forearm left of the boy who stole from Bakura, and nothing at all of his mother.

Well, there are also bits and pieces of human that have been left in various corners and on the road to rot and stink under the glittering desert sun. He vomits again, wipes his mouth, takes a breath, catches the reeking sweetness and vomits until there's nothing but water and acid coming out of his mouth.

**IV.**

He's vaguely irritated that they will not have the thief's death, left to be picked apart to heaven, but he shrugs and leaves. It's only to be expected. They are a town of grave robbers.

**V.**

At first he just moves on with his life. Kul Elna may have been the largest and most organized, but she wasn't the only town of thieves.

At any rate, she had been getting bold. More raids, more daring in her targets and more flamboyant in her black market. It stood to reason that she would be targeted for extermination.

He does petty work for various ringleaders who are impressed by his skill and mostly by the slight build that let him slip down the long soul vent with room and air to spare.

If the ghosts hadn't come, he would have been a crawler for the rest of his life.

**VI.**

The first ghost is his father. Bakura sees him in a bar at first and doesn't know the man until he appears in his room, translucent in the moonlight, and explains that he is the man who brought about Bakura, out of wedlock and in adultery.

He wants Bakura to _avenge_ Kul Elna, and Bakura _laughs_.

"Kul Elna was a village of grave robbers, _father_," He says, waving it off with an eloquent turn at the wrist. "This was already late in coming."

Yes, the ghost says, wavering and pearlescent under the haunting careless moon, but the robbers _were human_ as the Pharaoh's troops and did not deserve the desecration they got.

"Desecration?" Bakura says. "What desecration? Pharaoh's troops burned them, I expect, which spreads them _across_ and _into_ the earth as effectively as being shit into it, I'd think, and without smelling so much."

No, the ghost says, and begins the first telling of a story of utter, revolting disrespect for the dead.

**VII.**

His mother tells him, we were not given the _dignity_ _of repose_ in death.

The boy of the toy jackal says, we were put in a gigantic pot and _melted into jewellery._

(Although later Bakura finds a vague irony in the fact that grave robbers became the very trinkets they coveted, the first night he hears this he dreams of everyone he's ever known staring at him, just staring, as their faces slowly drip off and their skull ripples and becomes deformed and nothing is left but eyes, _staring,_ floating, until they too dissolve into the backdrop of red and become a scream distorted across his mind back and forth back and forth until he shoots bolt upright in bed and realises that the scream is _his._)

The old woman down the street who fed him on days his mother was out whoring or robbing is barely a whisper of a soul, but she hisses with painful strength into his ear, we will never _go back to the earth_ of which we sprang but forever _trapped_ in metal to be borne by the Pharaohs we _hate_.

A little girl he saw sometimes wailing on a corner turns out to be his half-sister, the legitimate daughter of his father who had frankly been a drunk. I was _scared_, she says, and they tore us all to _pieces_ and then took us _apart_ like little building toys and mixed us so up that we couldn't tell where we were or who was who and everyone was screaming, so I was _scared_.

His mother says, you could not protect us, either, but you may avenge us. Avenge us, Bakura.

**VIII.**

Within a month of the first visitation, his hair is a bright silver-white without even a strand of the blue-black with which he was born.

It doesn't matter. The ghosts teach him their best tricks, how to use his ba and his ka and his fists and daggers, and they pour their thirst for revenge into him – a thirst that began when they were born into Kul Elna and augmented as they grew, hunted and hiding like animals – and their vicious desire and their silvery insubstantial ba-creatures slowly sublimate into his.

He loses himself in this soul-searing life-consuming heat and _belongs here_, where everything is so icy it burns and hate floods every sense like a welcome rape.

**IX.**

He has complete faith in Diabound.

There is now only one survivor of Kul Elna.

**X. **

When he walks through the streets of Kul Elna, the spirits whirl in dizzying dazzling brightness around him and promise him everything in their power, and he promises them Pharaoh: "Our God is dead," He says, physical thirst choking his words and harshening his guttural voice around his swollen tongue. "He has been dead from the moment He ordered your deaths. The King of Thieves will avenge you upon the God of Men. I will avenge you."

The swirl becomes so fast and mad and wild he staggers, blinded by the exultant approval, and he says: "I will avenge you. I will avenge you." And the spirits spin faster and faster and they surround him and bring him to the nearest oasis, where he gasps between mouthfuls of water: "I will avenge. I will avenge."

Yesyes_yesyes_yes_yesyesyes_ is a turbulent soothing wind through him and he is borne and uplifted and _cleansed _by hate.

"I will avenge I will I will I will," He moans through his fitful nights as Diabound curls slowly around him to block him from slicing desert night, and the spirits whisper: _Yesyes, _yes we will _wait for you_ and when you come to us we will _be _here.

**XI. **

So there is something fitting and triumphant in the growing horror in his host's eyes as the ghosts appear to him in their turn. Bakura recedes from the boy's mind and laughs, mad and echoing and _reverberating_ through the angles of their soul.

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1491 words

One year after the year of the wordcount, one very confused Spaniard found ' India.' Of course, today we know where the real India is; nonetheless, authors desire one thing more: reviews. Concrit very, very, very, _very_ much appreciated. (Shameless begging, represent!)

Loko


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